If there is a ground,
it is a quantum of vibrating molecules.
Like walking on water during a storm at sea.
No guides in this emotional terrain,
it's new.
I don't know where I'm going or how to get there. Logic has failed; intuition, senseless.
Furies and lies and deceptions blow like crazed winds everywhere. Nothing can be trusted to be what it seems or purports to be. The stories you are told aren't the real ones. Secrets are everywhere. The underside is sleazy, riven with seething. And you wonder how you missed the way through, or if it ever was there. And when the revelations come, and they do, like light through the floods, you don't know how to survive them, and if you do, what direction you should be travelling in now.
Rudderless, without navigation.
How can you find ground when there is no ground?
What is continuous in the discontinuous?
What lasts in impermanence?
What is it in the wavering flame that doesn't go out? Even in the storm I travel though.
Perhaps on a scallop seashell, a Venus in lament.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Saturday, March 29, 2008
She Who Came Forth
The Embrace. Their children couldn't emerge into the light. He was heaven and she was earth. Uranus and Gaia, his wife, who he loved and refused to separate from. Creation waited. The embrace was tight, intimate, sensual, blissful, deeply in each other, unending. Cronus, his son, time, cruel time, cut off his genitals and threw them into the sea. Heaven and Earth separated. Out of the foam, Aphrodite was born. Love.
Aphrodite, who she was to the Ancient Greeks, though she was older than that, and linked to Ishtar-Astarte, and probably brought to the Greek islands by Phoenician sailors, Aphrodite, who later became Venus to the Ancient Romans, is one of the world's oldest divinities.
She was born from an act that separated Heaven and Earth. An ancient divinity present at the beginning of time. She Who Came Forth at the birth of the world.
Or, this is Hesiod's version in his Theogony. Aphrodite represents pure and spiritual love. From her foamy birth the Three Graces received her and wrapped her in rich garments and decorated her with gold ornaments.
The Goddess of Love.
Aphrodite Urania, or Celestial Aphrodite.
The Venus Botticelli saw, painted, understood.
Oh, there was another one, Homer's in his Iliad. Venus Pandemos or Common Aphrodite. She was born from Zeus and the Titan Goddess, Dione. This Aphrodite was baser, lust-driven and associated with physical satisfaction...
Aphrodite, who she was to the Ancient Greeks, though she was older than that, and linked to Ishtar-Astarte, and probably brought to the Greek islands by Phoenician sailors, Aphrodite, who later became Venus to the Ancient Romans, is one of the world's oldest divinities.
She was born from an act that separated Heaven and Earth. An ancient divinity present at the beginning of time. She Who Came Forth at the birth of the world.
Or, this is Hesiod's version in his Theogony. Aphrodite represents pure and spiritual love. From her foamy birth the Three Graces received her and wrapped her in rich garments and decorated her with gold ornaments.
The Goddess of Love.
Aphrodite Urania, or Celestial Aphrodite.
The Venus Botticelli saw, painted, understood.
Oh, there was another one, Homer's in his Iliad. Venus Pandemos or Common Aphrodite. She was born from Zeus and the Titan Goddess, Dione. This Aphrodite was baser, lust-driven and associated with physical satisfaction...
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Humanitas, the flowering
Venus - 'Humanitas,'
guiding force of the Renaissance
precious fantastic spirit
which transformed Western
civilization
Allegory of Spring
Spirit of the Renaissance
Out of the Dark Ages
with the rediscovery
of classical antiquity
Herald of the golden age
flowering of arts and sciences
under her tuteledge,
the great goddess
in her many
guises
What if Venus bucked
her symbolism as
spiritual value and
swung her scallop
shell around and
dove into
deep seas,
an intensity
of dark
passion?
guiding force of the Renaissance
precious fantastic spirit
which transformed Western
civilization
Allegory of Spring
Spirit of the Renaissance
Out of the Dark Ages
with the rediscovery
of classical antiquity
Herald of the golden age
flowering of arts and sciences
under her tuteledge,
the great goddess
in her many
guises
What if Venus bucked
her symbolism as
spiritual value and
swung her scallop
shell around and
dove into
deep seas,
an intensity
of dark
passion?
Friday, March 21, 2008
Eostre, Or Cross of Sheer Light
Click here for an MP3 Recording of Eostre, Or Cross of Sheer Light(2:25min)
Eostre, Or Cross of Sheer Light
I found myself ebbing
away, and so I fasted.
When my commitment to
life renewed itself, I broke
my fast.
If you've ever been dead and come back to life,
been hopeless and found a way to continue,
thrown yourself into nothingness to find meaning.
An elusive tune,
slender wash of light,
bare opening in the wall,
a sliver, crescent through which.
Or what's a moment but a casting through.
If you've been too tired to get up and then you get up.
Filled with silent despair and then the will to.
Nothing's even, that's the problem. Many impermanent states.
All taking turns or colliding. Interpenetrating or scattering.
Flowing or stuck. Constraining or freeing.
I like to have clean thoughts because then I can live in my mind.
Sometimes the dust, anger, grime.
Throw what's scathing out.
I feel your bright and beautiful presence
even if you feel like you've disappeared into nothing.
The edges of the sky hang like an aurora borealis of silk.
The trompe l'oeil of the moment. Discreet packets of time.
If you didn't tell me I was going to die, I wouldn't believe it.
And then the scaffolding crashed, blocks fell apart,
what resisted melted, and it was time to resurrect.
Passing beyond memory into. Or the rising.
©Brenda Clews
Good Friday, 2006 ( A repost of a poem and image I wrote and created for Easter on Friday, April 14, 2006, but recorded today, two years later.)
----------------
photographic path: a photo I took of sheer fabric over light, cropped, layered on itself, rotated, made somewhat transparent; then I may have used a marque tool to crop the uppermost layer to better reveal the brocade ribbon below, or was that one of the trajectories I didn't use; various marque tools to crop the right & left edges of the uppermost layer on right angles; the stamp tool to fill in a line that was left over from who knows what process; the burn tool to darken the upper and bottom right corners for visual balance. A collage I composed after writing the poem...
This is a photopoem: I've digitally embedded the poem in the image along with copyright information.
Eostre, Or Cross of Sheer Light
I found myself ebbing
away, and so I fasted.
When my commitment to
life renewed itself, I broke
my fast.
If you've ever been dead and come back to life,
been hopeless and found a way to continue,
thrown yourself into nothingness to find meaning.
An elusive tune,
slender wash of light,
bare opening in the wall,
a sliver, crescent through which.
Or what's a moment but a casting through.
If you've been too tired to get up and then you get up.
Filled with silent despair and then the will to.
Nothing's even, that's the problem. Many impermanent states.
All taking turns or colliding. Interpenetrating or scattering.
Flowing or stuck. Constraining or freeing.
I like to have clean thoughts because then I can live in my mind.
Sometimes the dust, anger, grime.
Throw what's scathing out.
I feel your bright and beautiful presence
even if you feel like you've disappeared into nothing.
The edges of the sky hang like an aurora borealis of silk.
The trompe l'oeil of the moment. Discreet packets of time.
If you didn't tell me I was going to die, I wouldn't believe it.
And then the scaffolding crashed, blocks fell apart,
what resisted melted, and it was time to resurrect.
Passing beyond memory into. Or the rising.
©Brenda Clews
Good Friday, 2006 ( A repost of a poem and image I wrote and created for Easter on Friday, April 14, 2006, but recorded today, two years later.)
----------------
photographic path: a photo I took of sheer fabric over light, cropped, layered on itself, rotated, made somewhat transparent; then I may have used a marque tool to crop the uppermost layer to better reveal the brocade ribbon below, or was that one of the trajectories I didn't use; various marque tools to crop the right & left edges of the uppermost layer on right angles; the stamp tool to fill in a line that was left over from who knows what process; the burn tool to darken the upper and bottom right corners for visual balance. A collage I composed after writing the poem...
This is a photopoem: I've digitally embedded the poem in the image along with copyright information.
Psychic Moon
I couldn't sleep and saw the full moon in the West when I rose but after I'd made coffee and let the dog out, it was gone. A full moon on the Equinox is auspicious, and I saw a light of mystery and psychic radiance that the clouds swirled over in the night sky.
It's been a Winter of great snow, more than in half a century. Toronto is usually warm and wet, it snows and turns to slush and melts. This year the snows fell, and fell, and fell. We haven't seen ground in months.
The parkette onto which I gaze is like trampled sugar icing with a coating of ice that makes it shiny.
It's been a Winter of shocking revelations for me.
A month ago I fell on the ice, straight like an ironing board, only I curved a little and protected my head while my hip took the impact.
A bruise the size of a snowball turned from brown to black to red to purple and is still present as a pale ochre shadow and I wonder if I will always carry it.
Slowly dawn melts into the sky.
The light is bluish-grey,
the colour he once said
of my eyes.
It's been a Winter of great snow, more than in half a century. Toronto is usually warm and wet, it snows and turns to slush and melts. This year the snows fell, and fell, and fell. We haven't seen ground in months.
The parkette onto which I gaze is like trampled sugar icing with a coating of ice that makes it shiny.
It's been a Winter of shocking revelations for me.
A month ago I fell on the ice, straight like an ironing board, only I curved a little and protected my head while my hip took the impact.
A bruise the size of a snowball turned from brown to black to red to purple and is still present as a pale ochre shadow and I wonder if I will always carry it.
Slowly dawn melts into the sky.
The light is bluish-grey,
the colour he once said
of my eyes.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
On the Mystical Theology of Spring
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Hidden Masterpieces
Botticelli's Venus
like pure meditation.
Sky and sea and shell.
Fabric of wind blowing.
Is she a heliotropic metaphor, painted by a man whose preference wasn't women, who presented an idealized version of woman without her dark burning orchard?
No contrary opposing forces
dark intrigues, smoldering
passions
erupting
like the fire rock
that buried Pompeii.
Nor is she a poetry of free association, drifting over the waves opening out towards non-meaning but fully signified: beauty, love, goddess.
She doesn't point us to the conflict of the unrepresentable, but to a representation of
beauty, a solar vision, of innocence, of love.
Botticelli's Venus carries no arrows, or armory.
A surface of
sweetness
idyllic.
No lusty, passionate,
vengeful goddess.
Appearing fragiley
on the ocean's
horizon.
Thin layers of translucent
paint.
The Birth of Venus and the Primavera kept from public view for almost five centuries, and then she rose like the morning star, radiating feminine beauty far and wide.
Pallas & the Centaur, Primavera, and The Birth of Venus commissioned by Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de'Medici in the late 1400s for his Villa di Castello in Florence.
Secret, hidden masterpieces. Not seen by the public until the 19th century.
Venus, the spiritual birth of Humanitas.
Lofty ideal. Hunger of hot desire
absent.
The messiness of reality
can't be faked.
"the soul establishes itself
through loving itself in the ideal"1
______________________
1 Julia Kristeva, Tales of Love (Columbia University Press, 1987), 110.
like pure meditation.
Sky and sea and shell.
Fabric of wind blowing.
Is she a heliotropic metaphor, painted by a man whose preference wasn't women, who presented an idealized version of woman without her dark burning orchard?
No contrary opposing forces
dark intrigues, smoldering
passions
erupting
like the fire rock
that buried Pompeii.
Nor is she a poetry of free association, drifting over the waves opening out towards non-meaning but fully signified: beauty, love, goddess.
She doesn't point us to the conflict of the unrepresentable, but to a representation of
beauty, a solar vision, of innocence, of love.
Botticelli's Venus carries no arrows, or armory.
A surface of
sweetness
idyllic.
No lusty, passionate,
vengeful goddess.
Appearing fragiley
on the ocean's
horizon.
Thin layers of translucent
paint.
The Birth of Venus and the Primavera kept from public view for almost five centuries, and then she rose like the morning star, radiating feminine beauty far and wide.
Pallas & the Centaur, Primavera, and The Birth of Venus commissioned by Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de'Medici in the late 1400s for his Villa di Castello in Florence.
Secret, hidden masterpieces. Not seen by the public until the 19th century.
Venus, the spiritual birth of Humanitas.
Lofty ideal. Hunger of hot desire
absent.
The messiness of reality
can't be faked.
"the soul establishes itself
through loving itself in the ideal"1
______________________
1 Julia Kristeva, Tales of Love (Columbia University Press, 1987), 110.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Poetry & Fruit
I'm sure I didn't look like that, and I don't know where all the people are. Strange. I travelled on a crowded subway and walked amid streaming crowds on the way to work this morning. A stranger snapped the photo. I said it was because my briefcase wasn't full of business papers but poetry and fruit. He hurried away. The subject of the photo is the briefcase, not moi, for surely that is what is important.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Days of Tears and Laughter
It passed, on the 7th, another year. By not telling, it was easier. My birthday and Christmas are the 2 days I miss my father most and so there is grieving. Only now I allow myself time to miss, to lament, to offer remembrance and praise, to understand perhaps a little more of the mysterious universe each time I enter sorrow, its spirals of loss and redemption, of endings and continuance, of knowing what is gone and what is to come. I offer myself time to remember, to feel instead of the denial I lived for years and which caused unexpressed despair on 'my day' and the day of festive giving. With recognition of the depth underlying these two days, allowing grieving, they are much happier, take on a glow of warmth and love, a radiance that they lacked when I was hiding sadness under a veneer of gloss. Oh, perhaps a half hour alone to weep, to be in the place of dissembling, of loss, of the irrationality of death, then the rest of the day is lighter - fun, joy, sparkle, and laughter.
Which it was, along with the chocolate truffle chocolate mousse chocolate cream cheese cake from Decadent Desserts and the company of my son and some fine white wine...
Which it was, along with the chocolate truffle chocolate mousse chocolate cream cheese cake from Decadent Desserts and the company of my son and some fine white wine...
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
The Green Wire Shelf
It's a rickety wire corner piece with soldered leaves trailing in green over which I hung a couple of strands of small white festive lights. It fits in the tiny corner of the tiny room. The bottom shelf has a few scattered printed poems that I read into his voicemail, not that he should be the only one to receive them, and you should know that, and manuals for the Tivoli stereo and radio and the Bang & Olufson headphones; the middle shelf holds a refurbished black plug-in Northern Telecom phone with good unfuzzy sound, real retro; the top shelf, a small stack of articles and art books on Botticelli.
When I meditate I unplug the lights, and after lie down and close my eyes and let the silence take me deeper, when I come up from the depths I roll over and place the jack of the lights into the plug on the middle shelf, the one with the retro phone.
Oh, the books have fallen a few times. I know I should have fixed the wobbly wire garden corner shelf to the wall but I didn't have a large picture hook and the store I went to didn't have that size.
Of course it happened. The books tumbled and rolled and fell onto my head in the dark while I was trying to attach the plugs for the small trellis of lights.
I was stabbed by the hardcover corner of my favourite one, the prints are so lush, and I stare at them in the evenings wondering how the Renaissance master painted them.
I have a bruise on my right cheek bone. It's pale grey, and slightly sore. I cover it in a little tinted moisturizer.
My Botticelli bruise.
When I meditate I unplug the lights, and after lie down and close my eyes and let the silence take me deeper, when I come up from the depths I roll over and place the jack of the lights into the plug on the middle shelf, the one with the retro phone.
Oh, the books have fallen a few times. I know I should have fixed the wobbly wire garden corner shelf to the wall but I didn't have a large picture hook and the store I went to didn't have that size.
Of course it happened. The books tumbled and rolled and fell onto my head in the dark while I was trying to attach the plugs for the small trellis of lights.
I was stabbed by the hardcover corner of my favourite one, the prints are so lush, and I stare at them in the evenings wondering how the Renaissance master painted them.
I have a bruise on my right cheek bone. It's pale grey, and slightly sore. I cover it in a little tinted moisturizer.
My Botticelli bruise.
Monday, March 03, 2008
Sunday, March 02, 2008
a la scallope
innocent and lyrically sensuous, fragile, beauty,
powerful goddess and untouched maiden, a blossom
of love
figure of spiritual ecstasy
incarnation of love under a paintbrush, in a vision, a feeling, expansive,
a Botticelli pink rose, Venus in her purity, born from the seafoam, coming into
being, music to ears that hear the seawinds bearing her
towards us
powerful goddess and untouched maiden, a blossom
of love
figure of spiritual ecstasy
incarnation of love under a paintbrush, in a vision, a feeling, expansive,
a Botticelli pink rose, Venus in her purity, born from the seafoam, coming into
being, music to ears that hear the seawinds bearing her
towards us
Friday, February 29, 2008
Ocean of Ice
Ice floes, sharp, jagged icicles. Hidden, floating icebergs. Tearing, sinking, drowning. We struggle amid snow squalls and tears of fire burn our cheeks. It's a dance of avoidance in the avalanche of the Arctic waters. Do not freeze, or turn to ice.
Ice moves quickly, unpredictably, in response to ocean currents and wind. Ice, like tectonic plates. Frozen earthquakes and ice mountains, ridges and blocky ice rubble. O be wary, what impales the heart, tides of ice.
Ice floes surge and spin, ice moves in packs, networks of cracks and patches of open water, pushing broken ice, loose chunks of ice, and ice jams. Icebreaking.
But the currents are intermixed in this strange painting of love, surging warmth and rigid cold. Where deceptions occur: what looks solid, isn't. And then the ice so thin it's a mirror down into the depths.
Venus comes aloft on her scallop seashell amidst the ice floes; the Zephyr winds are cold and northerly. The Horae await with a cloak embossed with delicately beautiful ice flowers, as fragile as morning frost. Where is the warmth? The sea is awash with cold and hot waters, whitecaps of ice or steam. Which currents are to be trusted?
Ice moves quickly, unpredictably, in response to ocean currents and wind. Ice, like tectonic plates. Frozen earthquakes and ice mountains, ridges and blocky ice rubble. O be wary, what impales the heart, tides of ice.
Ice floes surge and spin, ice moves in packs, networks of cracks and patches of open water, pushing broken ice, loose chunks of ice, and ice jams. Icebreaking.
But the currents are intermixed in this strange painting of love, surging warmth and rigid cold. Where deceptions occur: what looks solid, isn't. And then the ice so thin it's a mirror down into the depths.
Venus comes aloft on her scallop seashell amidst the ice floes; the Zephyr winds are cold and northerly. The Horae await with a cloak embossed with delicately beautiful ice flowers, as fragile as morning frost. Where is the warmth? The sea is awash with cold and hot waters, whitecaps of ice or steam. Which currents are to be trusted?
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Sun-washed Blossoms
Ishtar's high priestess, Inanna, queen of heaven and earth, of the rising and setting star in the East, Venus, sexual mystery of the darkness, not the sun-stroked beauty of Botticelli's.
Unclothed, unashamed but virginal, an untouched goddess of love blown in by waves whose whitecaps are like flocks of flying white birds. Botticell's Venus not the sensual 'come-hither' of Inanna and her Shepherd-King, Dumuzi. Or she of the Song of Songs.
Botticelli's Venus is the Virgin in a pagan landscape of delight in the beauty of the world. Fragile becoming on the wind-washed shores of our being. Her beauty not lustful but ethereal; the innocence of unblemmished spirituality.
Only, Botticelli, man who remained like a monk, single, dedicated to art, and art alone, your gorgeous muse causes all of Nature to bloom in your paintings where it bursts out of your canvases, the Birth of Venus and the Primavera.
Where is the sultry goddess of the dark gleaming gold temple of love?
Unclothed, unashamed but virginal, an untouched goddess of love blown in by waves whose whitecaps are like flocks of flying white birds. Botticell's Venus not the sensual 'come-hither' of Inanna and her Shepherd-King, Dumuzi. Or she of the Song of Songs.
Botticelli's Venus is the Virgin in a pagan landscape of delight in the beauty of the world. Fragile becoming on the wind-washed shores of our being. Her beauty not lustful but ethereal; the innocence of unblemmished spirituality.
Only, Botticelli, man who remained like a monk, single, dedicated to art, and art alone, your gorgeous muse causes all of Nature to bloom in your paintings where it bursts out of your canvases, the Birth of Venus and the Primavera.
Where is the sultry goddess of the dark gleaming gold temple of love?
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Valentines Day
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Temple of Love
Venus, star in the night. Love in the darkness. Your breath. Ecstasies of the body, erotic touch. This temple, its sacred creativities.
O, the goddess of love awaits, inviting. Sighing, and moans. The gleam of the god of war, his helmet golden red in the night.
When Anteros - god of requited love, "love returned," and the avenger of scorned love - came, wings beating like heartbeats, you knew me. For the first time. Anteros, brother of Eros, god of lust, love, erotic union.
Fire gleams in your eyes, volcanic. You didn't see me before though you had known me a long time. I was hidden in your life.
I'm tired of restrictions. Let's change what we have meant to each other. Like angels lying in a bouffant of chocolate and roses. The convergences on the public holy day of love, Valentine's.
Great art presents itself as presence in the world, alive, shimmering.
What the heart holds, for it prefers secrecy.
What the heart holds, for it prefers secrecy.
Thursday, February 07, 2008
birth of beauty
times of decrease, recession, turmoil, depression, upheaval, war, loss and degradation, fear and grief, the unpardonable, what can't be retracted, the birth of love borne by beauty on the waves of the sea
Savonarola's body burnt in the Piazza della Signoria, it is 1498, he who convinced you to renounce the sensual pleasure of beauty - The Mystical Nativity painted in 1500 so different to when
you and Leonardo da Vinci, a friend who you studied with in Verrocchio's workshop in the 1470s
those angelic visions
art historians speak of spiritual tautness in your work, of the grace of line and that your figures are holy heiroglyphics
she appeared under your delicate sable brushes in 1492 and disappeared for centuries until the Pre-Raphaelites resurrected her and now she is a definer of feminine beauty in the modern world
with my curls, when I was a young woman, people used to compare me to 'Botticell's Venus'; I, too, have borne her...
rising from the sea
the rush of waves in my ears
listening to you
beauty, fragile, on the lip of, edges, knowing loss's inevitability, a flower blossoms, fragrant perfume and soft vivid colour of petal drifting away, it can't remain, you knew, Sandro, and
yet, she is, borne by the Zephyr on the scallop-shell and wrapped in veils of flowers by the Horae
washes of colour, seaspray of roses,
translucent robes
poetry we weave ourselves with
Savonarola's body burnt in the Piazza della Signoria, it is 1498, he who convinced you to renounce the sensual pleasure of beauty - The Mystical Nativity painted in 1500 so different to when
you and Leonardo da Vinci, a friend who you studied with in Verrocchio's workshop in the 1470s
those angelic visions
art historians speak of spiritual tautness in your work, of the grace of line and that your figures are holy heiroglyphics
she appeared under your delicate sable brushes in 1492 and disappeared for centuries until the Pre-Raphaelites resurrected her and now she is a definer of feminine beauty in the modern world
with my curls, when I was a young woman, people used to compare me to 'Botticell's Venus'; I, too, have borne her...
rising from the sea
the rush of waves in my ears
listening to you
beauty, fragile, on the lip of, edges, knowing loss's inevitability, a flower blossoms, fragrant perfume and soft vivid colour of petal drifting away, it can't remain, you knew, Sandro, and
yet, she is, borne by the Zephyr on the scallop-shell and wrapped in veils of flowers by the Horae
washes of colour, seaspray of roses,
translucent robes
poetry we weave ourselves with
Monday, February 04, 2008
Divine Message of Beauty in the World
I write on vellum with sea-scalloped edges.
Birth blueness is everywhere, that particular nascent colour.
You bring the simplicity of writing with you.
While I wear a cloak of flowers, a shower of roses, lyrical, fragile birth, beauty, this flowing cape of words
That the goddesses of the seasons have woven for us.
___________
Botticelli's Birth of Venus hangs in the Uffizi, in Florence. It was painted in 1485.
Birth blueness is everywhere, that particular nascent colour.
You bring the simplicity of writing with you.
While I wear a cloak of flowers, a shower of roses, lyrical, fragile birth, beauty, this flowing cape of words
That the goddesses of the seasons have woven for us.
___________
Botticelli's Birth of Venus hangs in the Uffizi, in Florence. It was painted in 1485.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Oceanic
If I knew how. The swirl-over. In the bank's marble concourse, the ocean wraps you in its currents. We are never far from sea-salt, the briny wind, even inland.
The gentle breezes, long before Sandro, before she came gliding on the fan-shaped scallop sea-shell under his paintbrush.
Before we clothed her with poetry.
The birth of love in the world.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Veils to clothe Boticelli's Venus with
A poem arises catching the energy, imparting meaning, hestitatingly, faltering for words, images, rhythms.
My love for you.
Slowly through endless revisions,
shaping this love.
Disparate layers emerge, an undercurrent infiltered with strands, approaches, understandings, memories, hopes, desires, the way the sensual mind composes.
We create ourselves through each other. It's more complete,
who I am with you.
Not a version of reality but a veil of being,
the poem of love that is
a transparent garment we clothe ourselves with,
our metaphors and concepts of a world
which resists
our gaze.
Writing is a deeply
meditative act.
A language of love.
A listening.
My love for you.
Slowly through endless revisions,
shaping this love.
Disparate layers emerge, an undercurrent infiltered with strands, approaches, understandings, memories, hopes, desires, the way the sensual mind composes.
We create ourselves through each other. It's more complete,
who I am with you.
Not a version of reality but a veil of being,
the poem of love that is
a transparent garment we clothe ourselves with,
our metaphors and concepts of a world
which resists
our gaze.
Writing is a deeply
meditative act.
A language of love.
A listening.
Monday, January 21, 2008
Drumbeat
The palm drops
on the inside
of the skin
animal drumming
beating on the drum
drumbeating the night
beating on the eardrum
drum drumming deeply
drawing the heartbeat drumbeat.
My body is the drumbeat
drumbeating my skin
sweating, hot,
drumbeating my body's
percussion, rub, snare,
pounding, colliding of
musical pulses
lyrical sinewy
or staccato modern
or wild shamanic
hair flying
free.
Red shiny satin clinging,
wet
sweat.
The djembe hip bag that I scrubbed, suede dyed to emulate Holstein cow naugahyde, in black and cream, with a wild boar bristle brush and saddle soap because of the dark streaks, smells of animal hide.
I hold it to my nose, and smell. Animal. Hide.
The drumming of the jungle.
An animal skin.
Taut.
Primal beat bounding
resonating, resounding.
You gaze at me, though you haven't looked at me.
I am in your gaze without your seeing me.
It is my hunger you remember feeding,
that you want to feed.
Our heat burns hotly.
Drumbeating
the rhythms beating in us,
the African djembes
dance us.
__________________________
Lately I've been dancing to fabulous drumming. I'd like to thank the drummers at Toronto Tam Tam at Xing Dance Theatre, Shara Claire at 5Rhythms™, Gary Diggins, and Kwanza Msingwana at Tribal at Dovercourt House in Toronto, all in the last 3 weeks.
As a lyrical poet, I use the I-Thou relationship often in my writing. The "you" is a muse and doesn't refer to anyone in particular...
on the inside
of the skin
animal drumming
beating on the drum
drumbeating the night
beating on the eardrum
drum drumming deeply
drawing the heartbeat drumbeat.
My body is the drumbeat
drumbeating my skin
sweating, hot,
drumbeating my body's
percussion, rub, snare,
pounding, colliding of
musical pulses
lyrical sinewy
or staccato modern
or wild shamanic
hair flying
free.
Red shiny satin clinging,
wet
sweat.
The djembe hip bag that I scrubbed, suede dyed to emulate Holstein cow naugahyde, in black and cream, with a wild boar bristle brush and saddle soap because of the dark streaks, smells of animal hide.
I hold it to my nose, and smell. Animal. Hide.
The drumming of the jungle.
An animal skin.
Taut.
Primal beat bounding
resonating, resounding.
You gaze at me, though you haven't looked at me.
I am in your gaze without your seeing me.
It is my hunger you remember feeding,
that you want to feed.
Our heat burns hotly.
Drumbeating
the rhythms beating in us,
the African djembes
dance us.
__________________________
Lately I've been dancing to fabulous drumming. I'd like to thank the drummers at Toronto Tam Tam at Xing Dance Theatre, Shara Claire at 5Rhythms™, Gary Diggins, and Kwanza Msingwana at Tribal at Dovercourt House in Toronto, all in the last 3 weeks.
As a lyrical poet, I use the I-Thou relationship often in my writing. The "you" is a muse and doesn't refer to anyone in particular...
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
The Walker...
I passed her in the alley on the way home, large, in clogs without any socks, grey hair dyed blonde, the rain turning to snow with a wind rising, cold, gingerly braving the asphalt, hanging onto her walker, out, exercising, steps barely felt by numb feet and legs but each touch of the ground and forward motion an accomplishment. We crossed the road. Opening my door, the dog ran out and greeted her, which lit her face up. But where the pavement curved to meet the drain she fell. Sideways, on her hip. After assuring us she was fine, a neighbour and I lifted her to her feet. The ambulance was already flashing behind us. "I'm fine, I'm fine, thank you." I placed her purse on her walker and she began her slow step forward. Her hands couldn't grip the walker, it was uneven, the ground, and she fell again. The snow falling on bare skin, I pulled her top down, a small dignity, as the paramedics came and spoke to her and then lifted her and gently took her into the ambulance... perhaps diabetes, I didn't ask, only blessed her and wished her well and waved good-bye, and then came and wrote this, a sketch to remember her by.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
My daughter's photos of moi...
Photos on the blog are one way I keep track of myself, I suppose. The composite shot happily imbibing from a usually-packed away Waterford crystal wine glass that's one of the few remaining from the gift they were 30 years ago was taken in December on my daughter's birthday by her with her new camera. The Krishna-blue lady was also taken then, as a black and white photo and don't ask how I managed to colour it so, call it an act of 'soul force' through Photoshop, the path of filters and colorations I have forgotten. I'm not sure if I've shown it to her, but I like the blue skin and hair of fire... creative collaboration, of sorts.
A little self-portrait reflected-in-the-mirror from September. The thing is that top is a danceskin and my legs were bare and so I had to paint in a dress -you know how it is... :-)
Back to regular programming shortly...
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Rising from the Green Ashes
Needles follow the crinoline green tree like a wake as it is dragged out, on this day of unseasonable warmth and a rain that is barely more than mist. I know now. Comprehending in its enormity.
A criss-cross of green needles on the floor, over the carpets, down the stairs, so profuse the woods are overtaking. They crackle underfoot. They exude the intoxicating aroma of the resins of pine trees.
Were there lightly brown brushed earth and a firepit of dancing flames and a wide-starred sky. In the moment that the place buried in the core of the city turned into wilderness you came, and stayed. With your wild-boar ways, your genteel touch. We all wore our hiking boots in the small enclosure because the green was growing. We found half a red bird, shorn wing, lying, torn from the tree, while the other half flew around the room alighting on the couch or desk at whim, a red decoration, a whirling flame. Today was Epiphany, and it surprised us.
When you let the green in your veins flow instead of blue, verdant, fecund, rich. When we find the wilderness within the endless procession of us, passing by, layers upon layers of meanings, fluxes, the city crowds, where the wild where the red-feathered bird is whole, and sings like any decent phoenix.
I expect you to rise from the green ashes.
Is that tree tinsel, glittery, like pyrite? Be wary, the city offers satiations, pleasures, whatever you want. Is that what you're searching for? With obsessional focus? The tracks, pine needles stuck to your boots, falling off as you go, that I follow deep into the wilderness of your mind, where you dwell in loneliness mining yourself.
A criss-cross of green needles on the floor, over the carpets, down the stairs, so profuse the woods are overtaking. They crackle underfoot. They exude the intoxicating aroma of the resins of pine trees.
Were there lightly brown brushed earth and a firepit of dancing flames and a wide-starred sky. In the moment that the place buried in the core of the city turned into wilderness you came, and stayed. With your wild-boar ways, your genteel touch. We all wore our hiking boots in the small enclosure because the green was growing. We found half a red bird, shorn wing, lying, torn from the tree, while the other half flew around the room alighting on the couch or desk at whim, a red decoration, a whirling flame. Today was Epiphany, and it surprised us.
When you let the green in your veins flow instead of blue, verdant, fecund, rich. When we find the wilderness within the endless procession of us, passing by, layers upon layers of meanings, fluxes, the city crowds, where the wild where the red-feathered bird is whole, and sings like any decent phoenix.
I expect you to rise from the green ashes.
Is that tree tinsel, glittery, like pyrite? Be wary, the city offers satiations, pleasures, whatever you want. Is that what you're searching for? With obsessional focus? The tracks, pine needles stuck to your boots, falling off as you go, that I follow deep into the wilderness of your mind, where you dwell in loneliness mining yourself.
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
Monday, December 31, 2007
Spinning into a New Year with many beautiful wishes...
Sometimes sameness stretches in every direction and the days open and close like readings of the book of your life that you expect, and nothing shifts even if you ache for it. Other times the sheathes of pages of days open at alarming rates and you barely understand what's happening, let alone 'get a reading' on where, what, how, when, or why.
This festive season and as we make our way into another spiralling year, the latter rather than the former predominates in my life. Sorry if I've been absent, a family crisis has created shifting and buckling and reconfigurations... and both of my beautiful children are by their choice now living with me.
Wishing you all a great year ahead, loving, warm, successful, and especially feeling good about mostly everything, yourself, your family, friends, colleagues, work, health, finances, art, the whole marvelous and spinning wonder.
Remember there is nothing, ultimately, but our love for each other.
This festive season and as we make our way into another spiralling year, the latter rather than the former predominates in my life. Sorry if I've been absent, a family crisis has created shifting and buckling and reconfigurations... and both of my beautiful children are by their choice now living with me.
Wishing you all a great year ahead, loving, warm, successful, and especially feeling good about mostly everything, yourself, your family, friends, colleagues, work, health, finances, art, the whole marvelous and spinning wonder.
Remember there is nothing, ultimately, but our love for each other.
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Solstice Greetings
The very best wishes of the festive season
and a bright and happy New Year~
love Brenda
(embedded image of the sun from SOHO, taken today)
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Air Singing Words
It'll return differently. My inaudible voice. The leaves of the Poinsettia are indistinguishable, except for their colour. Hidden stamens in a red enfolded heart.
Voiceless, I spoke. The unheard words. Deep pressure of language pushing at my throat.
The man who couldn't speak came. I heard words that aren't spoken.
The chords couldn't vibrate in my vocal folds. A laryngitis, inflamed, swollen larynx, a temporary absence of speaking. The air from my breath couldn't sing on my words.
Uttering inaudible, squeaky synechdotes of words, charades, finding sign languages. Or forcing articulated sound through. What shapes into words that string their sentences over the landscape of plants and carpets. I enjoy the silence, resting in soundlessness.
My tongue, lips and mouth pantomime sultry words, my dear, but you can't hear. Listen for resonances. In the silk of the red Poinsettia blouse that I wear. And the tinsel of the season, green and red globes where we are reflected, cherry and gold ribbons tied into bows, sparkling prisms hanging from green pines, strings of lights lit, teasing at what's unsaid.
Voiceless, I spoke. The unheard words. Deep pressure of language pushing at my throat.
The man who couldn't speak came. I heard words that aren't spoken.
The chords couldn't vibrate in my vocal folds. A laryngitis, inflamed, swollen larynx, a temporary absence of speaking. The air from my breath couldn't sing on my words.
Uttering inaudible, squeaky synechdotes of words, charades, finding sign languages. Or forcing articulated sound through. What shapes into words that string their sentences over the landscape of plants and carpets. I enjoy the silence, resting in soundlessness.
My tongue, lips and mouth pantomime sultry words, my dear, but you can't hear. Listen for resonances. In the silk of the red Poinsettia blouse that I wear. And the tinsel of the season, green and red globes where we are reflected, cherry and gold ribbons tied into bows, sparkling prisms hanging from green pines, strings of lights lit, teasing at what's unsaid.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Hubris before the Flu Gods
Hubris, that's it. For boasting that I hadn't been sick in three years. For many people, such a length of time sounds good, even if I had a bad bout of bronchitis back then, in January 2005, and was bedridden for 3 weeks. It was just after the tragic tsunami struck the countries of the Indian Ocean. I wrote a poem during that illness, lying in my bed in Vancouver.
And not a sniffle since then.
Until this week. And how quickly it developed into laryngitis! It's punishment for yelling. Whenever I do, I suppose.
Hubris and Punishment. And they sprayed Lysol around me at work, laughing, after the coughing spell, after I tried to eat my hot chili pepper spiced stew, after which I lost my voice. It's fun losing your voice when you know it's the punishment for the hubris of boasting before the Gods of the Flu.
Can't say I'm enjoying it too much though.
So I slugged codeine-laced cough syrup for the rest of the afternoon and no longer cared.
And not a sniffle since then.
Until this week. And how quickly it developed into laryngitis! It's punishment for yelling. Whenever I do, I suppose.
Hubris and Punishment. And they sprayed Lysol around me at work, laughing, after the coughing spell, after I tried to eat my hot chili pepper spiced stew, after which I lost my voice. It's fun losing your voice when you know it's the punishment for the hubris of boasting before the Gods of the Flu.
Can't say I'm enjoying it too much though.
So I slugged codeine-laced cough syrup for the rest of the afternoon and no longer cared.
Monday, December 17, 2007
Solstice's coming...
Taken with the Sony DSC-W55 Digital Camera that I bought for my daughter's birthday recently. Quite different to the cell phone camera's shot. The words of the little poem there I don't think have the quality of being born out of this image...
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